


A Father Grey With Grief

by TheWaffleBat



Series: Reluctant Home [4]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, Grief/Mourning, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Low Chaos (Dishonored), M/M, Royal Spymaster Daud (Dishonored), Shapeshifter Corvo Attano
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 08:03:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18687430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaffleBat/pseuds/TheWaffleBat
Summary: Daud looked to Dunwall spread out on the horizon, dark and shadowed against the sky; all the darker next to the Wrenhaven’s estuary made silvery by the moonlight shining down. Even in the dark of night the ruin left by the rat plague was obvious - buildings crumbling into the water, the Wrenhaven creeping across its floodplain and marshes as the concrete walls along its banks broke and fell apart. So many districts left abandoned that no lights shone from their buildings’ windows, no lamps lit to light their streets. So many dead still in Dunwall’s streets the smell of rot reached even the Tower.Jessamine and her death will always be between them, but at least Daud and Corvo can overlook it.





	A Father Grey With Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Oscar Wilde's _A Lament._
> 
> Consider this an apology for the sequel for Reluctant Home taking so long.

It wasn’t hard to find Corvo, in the end. There were only a handful of places he ever went when he was upset; waking in the middle of the night and needing to walk the Tower’s shadowed halls, climbing to the roof to perch or flying to the small beach at the Tower’s foot. And he never hid himself from Daud, not as he did everyone else. It was always easy to find him when Daud went to look after he'd reached out for Corvo's sleeping body and woke because that space he was meant to be in was empty and cold.

Corvo heard him, ears twitching, but didn’t turn around to look as Daud stepped down from the rocks and walked across the sand to sit at a dry, flat stone by Corvo’s side. Corvo’s wolfhound’s ears folded back, tight against his skull, but did nothing else; no teeth gleaming in the gentle, cold light of the moon, no claws flexing into the sand, no hackles rising along his back. He just sat, unhappy.

“Thought I’d find you out here,” Said Daud. He stroked his hand across Corvo’s brow, rubbed a velvety ear between his fingers. “Figured you’d be a bird, though. Or a rat.” Corvo shrugged, leaned into Daud’s petting hand and turned his nose to the sea, eyes closing as he sighed, slow and heavy. “Do you want to talk about it? Fuck, don’t answer that. Why should you want to talk to me about it? I’m the one who killed your empress. I took your daughter from you.” Daud’s mouth twisted. “True, I found her for you,” He murmured, rubbed his jaw, his eye that he’d nearly lost to the scar cutting through it, “But it doesn’t change what I did.”

Corvo said nothing. Didn’t shift and change back to human, wolfhound’s pelt melting from his back as bone broke and changed, muscle pulling and stretching him into the new shape. Didn’t even take Daud’s wrist in his mouth, lips wrinkling back from his teeth, to say that he was angry, but that Corvo still cared about him spoken through the way he never bit down, never hurt Daud.

Daud looked to Dunwall spread out on the horizon, dark and shadowed against the sky; all the darker next to the Wrenhaven’s estuary made silvery by the moonlight shining down. Even in the dark of night the ruin left by the rat plague was obvious - buildings crumbling into the water, the Wrenhaven creeping across its floodplain and marshes as the concrete walls along its banks broke and fell apart. So many districts left abandoned that no lights shone from their buildings’ windows, no lamps lit to light their streets. So many dead still in Dunwall’s streets the smell of rot reached even the Tower.

So much like he and Corvo, Daud supposed. There were a lot of bodies between them, and the both of them had been made ruins by the only one of those bodies that was important. How many men had Corvo killed to keep Jessamine safe? How many men had Daud killed before his name was big enough that the only contract he couldn't refuse was on her? Burrows hadn’t been the only man to ask Daud to kill her - just the one who had the Abbey at his beck and call. How many had they killed before Jessamine, young on Serkonos’ backstreets where only their family and a handful of friends could be trusted? How many would they kill after her, desperate to keep her daughter safe?

Too many.

But it was hard to feel guilty about where he’d ended up, all the bodies left in his wake, when he looked to Corvo the wolfhound beside him, pressing the crown of his head into Daud’s palm - unafraid of the blood rusted black on his skin because he had that blood, too; on his claws and talons and teeth, on the Lord Protector’s blade hung up on the wall in their bedroom and on the one Daud gave him leaned against the bedpost, and obvious against his long, dark coat - bright as rubies where it had splashed across black fur and feathers.

It was terrible of him, but Daud didn’t care for those bodies that weren't Jessamine. He didn’t know them - they weren’t important. What was a noble against an empress? And against an empress who did the best she could for her people, the workers on the docks and in the factories and refineries? An empress who forced the vote to go to more people than just the aristocracy, passed laws that protected the people and increasing tax on the gentry who could afford to pay it so much more than those poor fucks scraping by?

Daud didn’t know Jessamine as well as Corvo did, but he knew enough to know that he had been making a mistake as soon as he’d accepted the contract, and more than enough to know that he was a fucking idiot as soon as her blood splashed hot across his gloves, too-bright against the marble floor of the pavillion.

“I never should have killed her,” Daud said. “I knew it was a terrible thing to do as soon as I took the job, but..." Daud sighed, rubbed the bone of Corvo's blade-sharp cheek with his thumb. "Why am I telling you again, you know all this. You know I thought the Whalers were worth her life. And we both know what the Abbey does to heretics like us - if they’d found out-” He cleared this throat, tried to swallow down the lump there but couldn’t because _Void_ , he didn’t want to think about it - didn’t want to imagine Billie and Thomas and Rulfio and Finn and Rickard and all the rest of the masters tortured to get them to sell the rest of them out. All the novices cut down because they hadn’t been good enough for grey coats yet and didn’t stand a chance against trained Overseers. All of Misha’s children killed because why would the Overseers care? Heresy was heresy, and their bodies would lie next to the novices and the Masters in the mud and floodwater because a heretic wasn't deserving of a funeral.

Corvo put his head on Daud’s knee, nosing into his fingers with a thump of his skinny tail against the ground. The Wrenhaven’s waters murmured as it slipped gently past the Tower, the sea just as quiet where it lapped against their tiny beach. Daud stroked Corvo’s head again, looked to his Void-black eyes shining at him so softly. He knew Daud’s guilt - saw it so easily in his face when Daud looked to Emily, bowed his head a moment to Jessamine’s portrait in the little shrine made for her.

Daud laughed to himself. “What a pair we make,” He said, scratching at the base of Corvo’s skull. He smiled a little. “You’re not the only one who misses her, you know. She was a good woman - the people on the bottom rung don’t know much about what goes on at the top, but we all saw her doing her best to keep us safe.”

Corvo melted into the shape of a housecat and leapt up to Daud’s lap, gently rubbing the crown of his head against Daud’s chin; all fluff and bone and skinny lankiness. No matter what, Daud thought fondly, stroking Corvo’s back, he was always such a scruffy animal. Creepy because of his black eyes, strangely beautiful with his wide, high cheekbones and long legs, and scruffy. Love twisted tight around Daud's heart because _Void_ , Daud was the biggest idiot in all the world and he’d hurt Corvo so _fucking_ much, and yet Corvo was here; in his lap and thrumming with a purr he couldn’t voice, kneading Daud’s knees like _he_ was the one needing comforting because at least that way Corvo could pretend he wasn’t still upset.

“I don’t deserve you. You’ve made me _happy_ , Corvo - do you have any idea how hard that is to do?” Daud pressed a kiss to Corvo’s little head, closing his eyes because _Outsider’s fucking bollocks_ , Daud didn’t deserve _any_ of what he had. “After everything I’ve done to you and your family you’re with me, made me spymaster and the Whalers my spies.“ Daud cuddled Corvo closer, lifting him up so he could settle in Daud’s arms, still rumbling with the voiceless purr he couldn’t quite help making. Daud pressed his face into Corvo’s soft fur, pressed a kiss to his back and cleared his throat. “I love you, Corvo. I know I don’t say it often, but I do. I can’t make up for what I did, but… thank you.”

Corvo pressed the top of his head hard into Daud’s jaw, the sting of his claws scratching across his arms too carefully to really hurt a reminder that he didn’t want thanks, didn’t want the shadow of the debt Daud owed him falling across their relationship, their love that was obvious in Corvo asleep as a hound at Daud’s feet, unafraid to let Thomas and Rulfio and Finn take his place at Emily’s side while he napped away the morning. He just wanted Daud; kneading the meat of Daud's forearm so sweetly in his little paws and rubbing his cheek against the bone of Daud’s jaw to remind him of it.

Daud settled back in his seat a little more. He could do that.

**Author's Note:**

> Jesus, The more free time I have the less I want to do in it.
> 
> In all seriousness I'm sorry the sequel for Reluctant Home is taking so long, I really am. Part of it is that I just needed a break from Dishonored, but mostly it's that I'm really struggling to write it and have been from the beginning. It's got to the point where I'm considering scrapping what I've got and starting again, and I've already done it once.
> 
> I promise that it _will_ happen, but it's going to take a lot longer to get even a first chapter I'm happy with than I was hoping for. I really am sorry.


End file.
